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National Archives Museum

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Historical Documents Purchase Committee

A brief note on Historical Documents Purchase Committee (HDPC)

To encourage the collectors or the holders of the historical documents and manuscripts which they had been preserving for centuries to donate these invaluable documents to the National Archives of India, an Archives Purchase Committee was constituted to institutionalize the process of the acquisition of valuable historical documents and manuscripts in 1957. Thereafter, in 1959, the name was slightly modified to Historical Manuscripts Purchase Committee and finally it was rechristened as Historical Documents Purchase Committee (HDPC) in 1961.

The aim and objective of this Committee is to acquire the documents and manuscripts either through gift or purchase. So far, 61 such Meetings have been convened , and the last one (61st) Meeting was convened on 1 February 2016.

The Committee comprises of eminent historians, archival and language experts. The importance of the HDPC can be judged from its extraordinary achievement of acquiring more than 1,60,000 historical documents and manuscripts from individual venders/donors A notable achievement of the HDPC is the acquisition of an extremely important and enormous historical collection of official Mughal records known as Inayat Jang Collection numbering 1,36,000.

Numerous other significant series of documents of historical value have also been acquired through the HDPC. These acquired holdings procured through HDPC are extremely useful in providing help and meaningful material to the research scholars.